iTunes In the Cloud: Free, Or Scan Your Library and Match Songs at $24.99 Per Year

iTunes In the Cloud: Free, Or Scan Your Library and Match Songs at $24.99 Per Year


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Whoa! The App Store has clouds in it!



Seriously, this is WAY cool.

I'm really disappointed in the iTunes in the Cloud. I was hoping to be able to stream music from the cloud to my devices. I'm to the point, where I can't carry my whole music collection on my iPhone, only my playlists. And I'm looking to have my iPad 3 be a 16GB in the future as well.

I like Amazon Cloud, but it's proving to be a pain in the butt. There is no official app for iPhone; it's not fun using the browser to stream music. And the music uploader is very buggy and wants to upload the same 50 songs repeatedly, which gives me duplicates in my library, if I'm not careful.

I have a question about the service. Say you have a bunch of albums that you own and ripped to put them on iTunes. The Cloud comes along and in the first year, you buy the service to get all your songs backed up. Will you have to keep renewing to keep all the songs there? Will they be "un-synced" if you don't continue the service?

class77 said:

I have a question about the service. Say you have a bunch of albums that you own and ripped to put them on iTunes. The Cloud comes along and in the first year, you buy the service to get all your songs backed up.

Click to expand...

I don't think that's how it works exactly.

The way I understand it, you pay 24.99. The service scans your library and then you have the possibility of redownloading those albums from iTunes, just as if you had purchased it (because iTunes will have a purchase history and you will have the possibility of re-downloading purchases)

class77 said:

Will you have to keep renewing to keep all the songs there? Will they be "un-synced" if you don't continue the service?

Click to expand...

That i don't know, guessing you'd have to keep paying to be able to keep downloading

Yea 6, I said it badly. I understand that you get basically iTunes' copies of the the non-iTunes songs you have in your library for the price of $24.99. They can even get them upgraded to 256 kbps when you have a lower bit rate song.

My question is will the songs that were upgraded when you scanned the library be downgraded(or disappear) if you don't renew the next year. I haven't heard any details.

Whatever the copy protection issues with stuff bought from iTunes and whatever the legality of burning from my own CDs, the songs I burned onto my iDevices from my CDs are mine.

I am not paying iTunes for those in any way whatsoever

Nighthawk4 said:

Whatever the copy protection issues with stuff bought from iTunes and whatever the legality of burning from my own CDs, the songs I burned onto my iDevices from my CDs are mine.

I am not paying iTunes for those in any way whatsoever

Click to expand...

You don't have to. Keep syncing them to your various iOS devices from your computer as you have been all along. No need for the "angry" face, it's just an option that you can choose to use or not use. Not a big deal at all.

iWhat said:

I'm really disappointed in the iTunes in the Cloud. I was hoping to be able to stream music from the cloud to my devices. I'm to the point, where I can't carry my whole music collection on my iPhone, only my playlists. And I'm looking to have my iPad 3 be a 16GB in the future as well.

I like Amazon Cloud, but it's proving to be a pain in the butt. There is no official app for iPhone; it's not fun using the browser to stream music. And the music uploader is very buggy and wants to upload the same 50 songs repeatedly, which gives me duplicates in my library, if I'm not careful.

Click to expand...

Try Audio Galaxy. It seemed to work pretty well, although it choked on my library after 56,000 songs....

Hey baggss, how long do you have to wait now for the same song to roll back around again when listening from beginning to end.

class77 said:

I have a question about the service. Say you have a bunch of albums that you own and ripped to put them on iTunes. The Cloud comes along and in the first year, you buy the service to get all your songs backed up. Will you have to keep renewing to keep all the songs there? Will they be "un-synced" if you don't continue the service?

Click to expand...

I would imagine you would have to keep subscribing to the cloud to keep them on the cloud. Once you have them downloaded though, they should be yours to keep wherever you have them.

I'm not sure I agree with your description of this as a "backup" since it's really not. The original files would remain on your computer(s) as they were before you ever went to the cloud regardless of what the cloud does. This is more of a method of sharing your music (and other things) between devices rather than backing up your data. Apple uses the phrase "store" but with the exception of content you have to upload yourself, none of the music "stored" comes from your actual files themselves.

Nighthawk said:

Whatever the copy protection issues with stuff bought from iTunes and whatever the legality of burning from my own CDs, the songs I burned onto my iDevices from my CDs are mine.

I am not paying iTunes for those in any way whatsoever

Click to expand...

You maybe need to calm down a bit and read what Apple has released about how this works:

Apple said:

If you want all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes, iTunes Match is the perfect solution. It lets you store your entire collection, including music you’ve ripped from CDs or purchased somewhere other than iTunes. For just $24.99 a year.

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. (NOTE-IT's NOT UPLOADED!) Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

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If you read that it's pretty simple. You are not paying for anything other than the ability to legally share your music (no matter the source) on any iDevice or computer (including Windows PCs) you authorize to access your account (up to 10 I believe). You are not paying Apple to use them, you are paying Apple to use their service so you can share them among devices more easily than having to load them individually on each device or taking up the time/bandwidth to upload to a server to share. $25/year is pretty darn cheap and since songs that are a match in the library don't eat up any part of that 5Gb it's not as big of a deal as you think it may be.

Seems to me that no one here is noticing that Apple has just provided you with a way to share pretty much your whole music library with anyone you authorize legally. While this may not seem like a big deal, since many have been doing this illegally for years, it's a HUGE step foreword for the labels and their acceptance of DRM free music sharing on multiple devices. Heck, the fact that Apple got all 4 labels to sign on and now allow you to re-download music for free that you've already purchased legally purchased (regardless of the source) is in itself a huge deal. These are the same folks, along with the MPAA, who have been suing the pants off folks for sharing as few as 10 songs on P2P networks in just the last few years. This is a pretty big deal, yet people are complaining about it.

baggss said:

Try Audio Galaxy. It seemed to work pretty well, although it choked on my library after 56,000 songs....

Click to expand...

If you mean it choked when populating its list, just give it some time and it will revive its self after a bit. I'm pretty sure that like me, you are having it read from an external HD, and possibly wirelessly at that. So the speed at which the data migrates is greatly dependent on the stability of your connection. Sometimes gremlins tend to muck about .... But once it is done, you shouldn't experience any issues as far as playback goes.

The one thing that the iCloud/iTunes experience offers which is better than what AG can, is continuous playback regardless of location. Audiogalaxy's servers will cache only so much data, so you'll get cut off after a minute or two when there's no 3/4 g or wifi.

Doug